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Chapter 10: Neither This nor That

Secondly, they are all otherworldly; I am this-worldly. Not that I don’t believe in the other world. There is no question of believing in it; I know it is - but one need not worry about it. Worrying is not going to help. The other world is going to be born out of this world. Make this life beautiful, live this life as sensitively as possible, and the other will be born out of it. It will be far more beautiful than this life, if you can make this life beautiful.

Buddha says just in the first sutras that if this life is beautiful, the other is going to be even more beautiful. But if you think of the other life, if you project about the other life, if you dream about the other life, life after death, you will make this life so ugly, so ill at ease, that the other will become more ugly.

You need not think of tomorrow, today is enough unto itself. Live this day with such joy and ecstasy - from where is tomorrow going to come? It will be born out of this ecstasy, it will be more ecstatic. And then you have the key - the key that unlocks all the doors of life.

Live the moment. I believe in the moment. Those godmen, they talk about the other life, life after death, heaven and hell - all that is absolutely unnecessary. People are already much too puzzled; don’t puzzle them any more.

My teaching is very simple, to the point: live moment to moment, dying to the past, not projecting any future; enjoying the silence, the joy, the beauty, of this moment. And out of this, that will be born. It comes of its own accord. As Buddha says, “Just as the shadow follows you, the future follows you.” If your present is ugly, the future is going to be hell; if your present is beautiful, the future is going to be paradise.

Thirdly, up to now, these so-called godmen have been dividing humanity into Hindus and Christians and Mohammedans and Jainas and Sikhs and Parsis. There are three hundred religions on the earth and at least three thousand sects within those three hundred religions. These godmen have been creating hatred amongst people. They talk about love, but they create the context in which only war happens. Religions have been fighting with each other, destroying each other, murdering each other, butchering each other. More blood has been shed in the name of religion than in the name of anything else. Not even politics is as criminal as your so-called religions.

Now, all your godmen are either Hindus or Mohammedans or Christians. I am neither a Hindu nor a Christian - I am nobody. And I help people to become nobodies. I help people to become unburdened of all this nonsense. It is enough to be - there is no need to be a Mohammedan or a Hindu or a Christian. There is no need to go to any temple, mosque or church. The whole existence is a temple, and the trees are continuously in worship, and the clouds are in prayer, and the mountains are in meditation. Just start looking around.